


Carbon

by stubbornandsuspicious



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, captain wolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubbornandsuspicious/pseuds/stubbornandsuspicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Wolf, set between seasons 3 and 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

Ruby lay awake in her room, watching the minutes on tick by on her alarm clock.

Two o'one. Two o'two. Two o'three.

She should have been sleeping - she was trying to sleep - but, two floors below, creaking hardwood was keeping her awake. A week ago, it had been the quiet clicking of the buttons on Henry’s gameboy - doubtless played under the covers well after his bedtime - that tugged on her consciousness at this hour. The details of what had happened after Emma stormed out of the diner were fuzzy. For the town, they’d been gone only a few minutes but, for them, clearly it had been longer. Whatever had happened - whatever had changed - Emma had taken an apartment, leaving only Killian…and Killian was pacing the floors.

Two fifteen. Two sixteen. Two seventeen.

Her mood hovered somewhere between mild annoyance and sincere concern. On the one hand, she could no longer count the days that had passed since he’d allowed her to get a good night’s sleep. On the other, she was worried for him.

Weeks of watching them in the inn and at the dinner had made it impossible not to see the connection they shared. Whispered conversations in corners and heavy glances that couldn’t be ignored had her convinced when Killian bounded into the diner that morning - an eager spring in his step that explained absolutely all of the labored breathing she thought she’d heard through her earplugs the night before - that, wherever they’d gone and whatever they’d done, they’d come back together. Emma and Henry’s early AM apartment hunting even seemed to point to it, but there was something ever so slightly off at their table when she brought him a cup of coffee - some subtle shift that made her uneasy as she walked back to the counter, struggling to push it out of her mind.

It was an unfortunate reality of her existence - one the first curse had given her a temporary reprieve from. The world, so large for everyone else, always seemed claustrophobic to her. It wasn’t merely the constant din of conversation or the deafening sound of a chair scraping across the floor - it was these moments that wore on her psyche.

Two floors below her, a veritable stranger stood suffering and, though she had no right to the information, she knew why. Moreover, she knew how deeply.

Even over the sizzle of bacon and the clang of pots and pans, she’d heard Emma’s hurried dismissal - listened and known how each word must have made his heart break.

“I take it you aren’t ready to tell Henry?” he’d asked, finding her leaning against a door jamb, staring out through the open back door.

“To tell him what?” she’d said, the acerbic bitterness biting, even in the haze of Ruby’s memory. “Killian, listen…”

Emma said a lot of things, and Ruby tried not to hear them, but each number punched into the register was punctuated by a few seconds of distraction. Phrases like “I was relieved to be back” and “I wanted to feel something…” flitted unbidden into her ears, lodging themselves in her grey matter and refusing to let go. For a few days, she gave him the odd extra-wide grin and warm greeting, trying to bring a smile to his lips or that long-dead swagger back into his gait, but he mostly ate his meals in silence before disappearing toward the docks. It wasn’t until she caught herself seriously considering feeding a plate of chocolate chip smiley face pancakes to Captain Hook that she realized she might have been fixating a little.

Two thirty-three. Two thirty-four. Two thirty-five.

Throwing off the blankets, she grabbed a sweater off of the armchair by the bed and slipped her feet into the nearest thing that resembled shoes before plodding down the stairs, resolved to do something before she started drawing ketchup cartoons on his hamburger buns.

He didn’t seem to hear her come down, still pacing, and he didn’t notice her making her way into the little kitchenette either, as she tore the plastic off a bag of popcorn and shoved it into the microwave, jamming the buttons a little harder than was probably necessary. He didn’t stop pacing until the microwave beeped, in fact - the sudden stillness a foreign relief - but, by then, she was already wide awake.

Dumping the popcorn into a bowl, she grabbed a throw blanket off the back of the couch in the sitting room and made her way down the hall to his room, rapping her knuckles twice against the door. “Room service, open up.”

The lock clicked open a moment later and he opened the door, startling her for a moment. She had seen him bruised, seen him bloody, and seen him battered to beyond recognition, but she’d yet to see him look this defeated. Black smudges surrounded both eyes, emphasizing the already dark circles from too many sleepless nights and his shoulders slumped under the weight of exhaustion. It might have made her want to cry had she not wondered, idly, how similar his sleepless nights were making her look.

“I appreciate the gesture lass, but I’m no-”

“Stop it,” she interjected, plastering a bright smile on her face and sliding past him into the room. “We’re watching a movie. I brought popcorn.”

“Ruby…” he argued, watching her rifle through the stack of plastic remotes for the one she wanted before flopping down onto his bed.

“You’ve kept me awake every night for a week, Killian, and you’re keeping me up again. Now I like you, I do, but if you’re not going to let me sleep, you are going to have to entertain me.”

She surfed the channels, parsing every potential selection for it’s probable pitfalls and, after dismissing a half dozen romantic comedies, three atrocious action movies, and plenty of proof that Rob Schneider had, at one point, been a saleable commodity, stopped her channel surfing on Jurassic Park.

By the time Sam Neill and Laura Dern were being brought to their knees at the sight of a brontosaurus, he’d sat down beside her, propping himself up with a few pillows - not quite relaxed, but at least more at ease than he’d been. Casting a sidelong glance in his direction, she held the popcorn out for him, nudging his elbow. “I’m to understand these creatures aren’t common in this realm?” he asked, taking a few pieces before pressing on. “And why do they appear to be trying to keep them as some sort of pets?"

Ruby smirked and let her head fall back against the headboard, turning to smile at him. “You’re going to love this movie…”


	2. Two

She was kneeling behind the counter, trying to dig a sleeve of paper napkins out from behind a half dozen serving trays when the door opened, the bells jangling her weary nerves and she started, banging against the shelf. “Kitchen’s closed,” she called, swearing under her breath and clutching at her upper arm as she stood up.

Calling the two and a half hours she’d spent comatose on her pillow this morning ‘sleep’ might have been too generous. At most, it felt like an extended nap, but the exhaustion had seemed worth just to feel the pall of his sadness lifting for a little while as he heckled every decision Dr’s Grant and Sattler made. The usual chaos keeping her busy through lunch and dinner rush further softened the blow - though John, Tuck, and the rest of Robin’s Merry Men had been a boisterous and unwelcome surprise - but as the night wore on, she caught herself counting down the minutes to close. When the clock finally ticked past nine, she was nothing if not relieved. Now, with twenty minutes of cleaning and a customer standing between her and a very hot bath, she was beginning to regret not taking the time to lock the door.

The bells jangled again as it clicked shut, and when she looked up from behind the mess of hair that had fallen into her eyes, she was surprised to see Killian sliding into one of the stools. “No supper for a weary sailor?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow toward the sky.

He was kidding, of course, and he smelled faintly of rum, but she supposed that was to be expected. Surveying him for a moment, she considered asking him outright what was wrong but thought better of it, propping the napkins up against the register and moving to lock the door. “Well, if I’d known I had a weary sailor on my hands, I wouldn’t have been so hasty. What can I get for you?”

There was no answer, but his gaze followed her as she went, swiveling the stool around while she made her way from counter to door, then door to hall, and hall to kitchen, finally poking her head through the order window. “Cheddar or American?”

“What?”

“I’m making you a grilled cheese. Cheddar or American?”

“I’m not terribly hungry,” he said by way of an answer, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his flask.

“It’s a diner, Killian. We feed people. It’s what we do. I’m feeding you. Cheddar or American?”

She waited a few beats for an answer but none came, save a lopsided smile, so she decided for him, flipping open the lid to one of the coolers and tearing back the plastic on a stainless steel bin of cheese. “I thought I might see you at lunch,” she said a moment later, slowly tilting a pat of butter around in a pan. The question was loaded, but then, so was he and she hoped he wouldn’t notice, watching his expression for some telling change.

“Aye, I meant to come in and thank you for the company last night, but I had some business to attend to with Mr. Smee and one thing led to another.”

It was with concern and caution that she waded her way through their next five minutes of conversation, using the quiet moments provided by spatula searching and bread flipping to form careful sentences in response to each of his slightly slurred ones. When she slid a plate in front of him - a grilled cheese (slightly burnt) and a bowl of tomato soup (slightly under microwaved) - and set her own down next to it, she leaned against the counter and pulled off a corner of the sandwich. “Have you ever had one of these before?”

“I think I can manage a sandwich, lass. I may be new to this realm but the concept did exist in our land.”

She rolled her eyes. “This is not just any sandwich. This is a grilled cheese and, while delicious on it’s own, it’s even better if you dunk it in the soup.”

He eyed her suspiciously as she dunked the hunk of bread into the soup and popped it into her mouth, that same quizzical eyebrow in the air, but followed along a moment later, smiling in spite of himself.

“See,” she prompted. “First Jurassic Park, now a grilled cheese. You’re fitting right in.”

“If understanding that ridiculous story is a prerequisite for assimilating, I think I’ll pass, love,” he answered, taking another bite beneath a furrowed brow.

“Oh come on, you enjoyed it!”

“It was horrifying. There’s a difference.”

“It’s just a movie!”

“You say that like it’s supposed to mean something…”

“It is. Movies are supposed to be entertaining. No one would actually build a dinosaur theme park, Killian.”

He rolled his eyes and tossed his sandwich down onto the plate, wiping his fingers off on a napkin before waving them in her face. “What happened to all of them? They’re mating. It’s an island, but surely some of them can swim…and even if they can’t, does the ecosystem just carry on and no one notices it? What if some sailor stumbled on it?”

They picked up their argument exactly where it had left off last night, light she hadn’t seen in days creeping back into his eyes as he fought with her - an endless list of reasons humanity had made a terrible mistake in creating a dinosaur theme park. His fears ranged from the rational to the ridiculous and he kept slipping up and calling them 'dragons,’ but she couldn’t bring herself to mind. Listening to him quibble with every inane detail kept her smiling long enough to finish her dinner and clear their plates.

He was still going long after she’d refilled and replaced each and every napkin holder in the restaurant. “Yeah, you’re still taking this way too seriously…”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he protested, helping her flip the stools up onto the counter. “I did rather enjoy the surly blonde, though.”

“You would,” she fired back, realizing what she’d said a moment too late.

A flicker of pain crossed his expression, quickly masked by an unconvincing smile, but he tried to respond cheerfully nonetheless, nodding and licking his lips. “Aye, that is a nasty habit of mine, it would seem.”

They stared at each other for a long moment - him, seemingly incapable of finding another sentence, her terrified to say anything that might make it even worse. Really, anything but a joke about time travel…. Throwing the last stool up on the counter, she frowned, considering him for a moment before grabbing his coat sleeve.

“Come on,” she urged, tugging him along behind her toward the back door. “I have a surprise for you.”

He asked where they were going a half-dozen times between the diner and the inn, a half-dozen more as she dragged him up the stairs to her room, but it wasn’t until he was in the hallway outside of her door, watching her fumble with her keys, that he became actually insistent. “Ruby, this probably isn’t a go…”

“Would you relax?” she chided, opening the door and pushing him through it, remembering he’d been drinking only after he stumbled over the threshold.

Her laptop sat on the edge of her desk where she’d left it. Picking it up and flipping open the lid, she punched in her password and kicked the door closed, collapsing onto the loveseat a moment later. He followed hesitantly when she gestured for him, shifting restlessly against the overstuffed cushions and pretending not to watch while she navigated through the operating system - intrigued but not quite willing to show it.

Until the title theme started playing, that is.

Straightening up, he leaned in to get a better look at the tiny screen and she tilted it closer. “It’s a trilogy. I downloa - er, found - the second one for you on my lunch break. I thought we might let the experts settle it.”

“Lass, I hardly think you can call those people exp-”

“Just shut up and watch the damn movie….”


	3. Three

She woke up to something cold and wet, consciousness nagging at her like some unpleasant and happily forgotten task, but it was the cold and wet that kept her from drifting back off to sleep. Her face felt slimy - somehow sticky - and she realized through her sleepy haze, that she'd been drooling. Annoyed and with eyelids still clamped shut, she laced one hand out from beneath the blanket draped over her shoulders and wiped the saliva from her cheek, murmuring a steady stream of feeble complaints under her breath.

_Stupid fucking lamp. Clapper. Tired. Damn it...._

It wasn't until she heard someone chuckle that she actually woke up. Sitting up like a shot, she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes and ignore the blinding pain in her neck, but the world was still blurry around the edges.

Her room. Her sofa. Her irritatingly bright table lamp. Her...shadowy figure?

"Well, you don't snore," he remarked with a laugh, taking her in with far more clarity than she could direct at him. She'd fallen asleep almost three hours ago, head lolling to one side, then the other, before finally coming to rest on his shoulder. There'd been a dicey moment when the movie ended that he thought he might have to wake her, but closing the lid seemed to make the repetitive music stop and the book on the coffee table proved to be entertainment enough. (Though, if he'd known he would be greeted with smudged mascara, smeared lipstick, and an angry red stitching imprint - the seam from his vest - emblazoned on her cheek, he might have been willing to wait even without the distraction.)

"Oh god..." she groaned, pulling her knees up to her chest and throwing the blanket over her head, crimson blossoming in her cheeks.

"I'd be willing to swear to it if it came to that," he continued, still grinning at her through the holes in the crochet.

"How long ago did I fall asleep?" she asked a moment later, fingers working furiously at the dark circles around her eyes.

"Not long," he lied.

"Killian..."

"An hour...." he lied again, chuckling at her raised eyebrow. "Three."

Again, she groaned. Again, he laughed.

Reaching into the heap of leather on the floor that was his discarded jacket, he drew out his flask and offered it to her, one leery hand sneaking out from underneath her fabric fortress to take it before disappearing again.

The burn of alcohol in the back of her throat was nothing compared to the heat of inexplicable embarrassment coloring her cheeks. By all accounts - his, anyway - she'd done nothing too mortifying and, in fairness, he didn't actually seem like the type to humiliate her for sport. Still, she couldn't help but stay hidden as she passed the flask back to him.

He took a pull himself, replacing the cork and setting it down on the coffee table before leaning back against the cushions - one arm slung wide along the back of the couch. "Better?" he asked when she finally emerged, still raking fingers through her tangled hair.

There was an endearing vulnerability to her that he'd scarcely noticed before now, evident even in the playful way she kicked him - bare foot colliding with his thigh before she pulled it back in - and it it was then that he realized how relaxed he'd let himself become. He'd spent weeks here in Storybrooke, a year trying to get back to it, and given up so much in the process. Nothing he was feeling could quite be classified as regret, but it provided a sharp contrast to the easy moment he found himself having now. For some reason, that, more than anything else, made him feel guilty.

Stiffening, he leaned forward to reach for his jacket, muttering something about leaving her be, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, shaking her head. "No. Come on. I do something humiliating and then you leave? No way - spill."

"I'm afraid I'm not quite as narcoleptic as you are, love - and I'm not going to wear your lipstick either."

Rolling her eyes, she straightened her blanket out again so that it covered her toes and then glanced back up at him, weighing her moment. There'd been grief in his eyes a second ago - a sense of unease teeming just below the surface. Eager though she was to lift his spirits, there was part of her that knew merely lifting them was unlikely to last any longer than her physical presence did. That, or she was merely curious. Certainly one or the other. Biting the inside of her bottom lip, she smirked before delivering her ultimatum. "Tell me something risky."

He quipped his first response and his second - a joke about Mr. Smee's taste in women and another about adjusting the rigging in high seas - but when she didn't look away, instead unleashing the full force of her wide eyes and patient smile, he offered her an honest answer. "I'm trying to leave Storybrooke."

"Because of Emma?"

"There's hardly room for a pirate in a world with these," he joked, gesturing to her discarded laptop.

"So it's because of Emma," she repeated.

Uncorking the flask, he swallowed the lump in his throat along with the rum, not looking at her again until he'd banished sadness from everything but his eyes, asking "And what if it is?"

"Then I would - as your newest friend...which I have decided I am - tell you that there's more to Storybrooke than Emma. Whatever she did."

"She didn-"

"Oh yes she did," Ruby interjected, cutting him off. Her friendship with Emma had always been important, but it was impossible not to see the pain she'd caused him, and impossible not to see pain he was now causing himself. "I'm not saying she hurt you on purpose, but you are allowed to be hurt, Killian."

"It's not her fault," he protested, the faith in his tone willing her to stay quiet until he'd finished. "I pushed her. Being there - with David and Mary-Margaret...working with Rumplestiltskin as if the last two years of our lives had never happened. It was surreal - seeing my world as if she'd never existed. It's my fault."

"Look, I don't know what happened back there," she said, voice softer this time. "You say that you pushed her, and maybe you did, but don't say it like you pushed her toward something bad."

"I can borrow Henry's story book if you would like to see the evidence to the contrary."

"No, come on. You saved us - you saved me."

Eyes snapping abruptly to hers, it was as if he could sense the weight in her words as she spoke them - and now, watching him watch her, she began to feel a familiar panic rising. It had been the unspoken rule of her life here in Storybrooke never to talk about it unless she had to. At home - in a place where dragons and giants roamed free - it was easier to admit that the wolf was a part of her. There, it almost seemed normal. Here, however - this sleepy little town where she'd spent so much time believing she was little more than a waitress - even thinking about it cost her something. While everyone else had the freedom to pretend they were still the miners or fishermen or shopkeepers they'd been, every full moon she was forced to remember. To remember how different, how other, how much less human she really was, and how very, very far from home she'd travelled.

Still, staring back at the broken man in front of her - sorrow etched in every line of his face - she steeled herself and forced her lips to wrap around the words. "Without Snow, I don't know what I would have become," she started, chewing on her lipstick again, unbidden tears already creeping their way forward. "I grew up thinking Granny was my only family, and then, after Peter...when I found out who I was.... I've never felt more alone. Snow and Granny, they tried to make me feel like I was a part of something, but I never did and then one day, I found her - I found my mother.

"I thought I was finally going to have a family - a family who understood me, no less - but they weren't who I thought they were and Snow is the one who showed me that. She showed me that family is what you make it. She saved me. Killian, if you hadn't been there to bring Emma back from New York and Zelena had gotten her way, Snow would never have fled the kingdom and hidden in our chicken coop, I would never have made my best friend, and there would have been no one there that day when I needed them."

"Ruby...."

"I've heard the stories about who you were before. I don't know how many of them are true, but I do know that you're not that man now. Give yourself some credit."

He looked at her for a long while, the silence broken only by their breathing and his fingers still rubbing idle circles over embossed leather on his flask. There was more she could have said - more comforting messages to spew at her temporarily captive audience - but the words had been tumbling out of her mouth without any real forethought and, now that she'd stopped, she couldn't quite bring herself to start again. It was one thing to talk candidly about her past with David or Mary-Margaret, another to be honest - though less forthright - with Dr. Whale, but this had been something different. It wasn't merely Peter or Granny or her mother she'd been speaking of, it was a reality that only occurred to her a moment before it was uttered. Without him, she would have lost everything.

Reaching up to rub a tear from the corner of her eye with the blanket, she let out a small chuckle and shook her head, breaking his unyielding stare. "So did the dragons get off the island?"

"The _dinosaurs_ ," he corrected, sarcastic flare for the dramatic returning to his tone, "do get off the island, but not in the way I'd imagined..."


	4. Four

On the farm, days were tracked by effort and the passing of weeks or months best represented in the phases of the moon. Here, in Storybrooke, calendars, clocks, computers, cell phones, newspapers, and the television all conspired to remind everyone of each day as it passed and time, of late, seemed to be slipping through her fingers.

Saturday seemed like a sleepy blur - her early shift passing almost entirely before she realized she hadn’t seen him, but she blamed it on their late night. On Sunday, his absence began to worry her, and she replayed their conversation again and again, searching for some throwaway sentence that might have offended him. By Monday morning, it had progressed to a fully certifiable meltdown, complete with restless energy, circular logic, and an inordinate amount of self-loathing.

Not even putting a few miles of pavement beneath her feet had been able to clear her mind and no amount of hot soapy water seemed to be doing the job either. Soaking weary muscles in the tub, she listened to the needle on the record player - scratching it’s way uselessly around the end of an album in the other room - and chastised herself for bringing it up with him in the first place. The thing - the wolf thing - was a lot. It had been a lot for her to take in, and it was her. Trying to talk about it with other people never ended well. Some, like David or even Emma, were able to accept it because they knew her…beyond the wolf. Others, like Leroy, merely ignored the reality entirely. Gold had been things far darker than a werewolf and Belle seemed to regard the wolf as more abstract fact than actual entity - sidestepping the issue almost entirely.

But Killian?

A man who spent centuries at sea would have encountered many a fantastical creature, but none with four legs or fur, and likely none that spent most of their time masquerading as an awkward girl.

She continued her self-flagellation as she dragged herself out of the tub and wrapped up in a towel, plodding a damp path back into her bedroom and contemplating her options for a moment before collapsing into the mattress. It was there she lay when knuckles rapped at the door fifteen minutes and three games of cell phone sudoku later.

“I’m in the bath!” she lied, recognizing Granny’s signature impatience even through an inch of solid oak. Her protests fell on deaf ears, apparently, because a key scraped in the lock and the door was open a moment later.

“That was quick,” she remarked, her eyes trailing from the towel to the empty tub and back again. “I need you to run an errand for me.”

“It’s my day off.”

“And I see you’re spending it well…” Granny replied, setting a gift bag down on the edge of the bed. “I’m asking as your grandmother, not your employer.”

Ruby shifted, tightening the towel around her chest but refusing to get up, and rolled her eyes. “Funny how that changes….”

“If,” Granny started, ignoring the admittedly smart-ass remark, “You can be bothered to get yourself dressed today, I thought you could take this layette to Snow and David.”

“Granny…” Ruby protested.

“Unless you would rather inventory the freezer…”

 

 

Inventorying the freezer might actually have been warmer. There was a solid layer of frost on the sidewalks, the bushes, and - most unfortunately - her windshield when she stepped outside and the drive to Snow’s apartment didn’t give the engine nearly enough time to warm up, so her fingers were still mostly numb when she touched them against the doorframe, tapping out a little pattern into the wood and hoping they would hear it.

Snow wrenched it open a moment later, a frantic expression on her exhausted face. “Oh god, thank you for not waking the baby…”

Her hair stuck out at odd angles and her shirt - one of David’s, actually - was covered in any number of unidentifiable stains, but she still found the energy to offer to make tea and produce a plate of barely stale cookies before collapsing into a chair.

“You really didn’t have t-” Ruby started to say, but Snow waved her off, lifting her tea bag a few inches before dropping it back into the mug.

“No, I did. It’s so nice to have a conversation with someone who won’t vomit on me, I’d be willing to do pretty much anything.”

“David still not feeling well?”

“If he weren’t so miserable, I would think he got the flu on purpose. Dr. Whale has been by twice and, thankfully, little Neal hasn’t picked up the bug, but it’s a nightmare doing it on my own…”

She talked endlessly. Feeding schedules, sore nipples, dirty diapers, and a lot of unrealistic fears, but it was nice to listen to someone else’s problems for a while - nice to let questions like ‘It can’t really be called Butt Paste, can it?’ and 'When she says cracked nipples, does she actually mean cracked?’ crowd out the more melancholy ones she’d been asking herself this morning and, by the time tiny little newborn cries filtered through the static on the baby monitor, her fingers had warmed up enough to hold the little prince.

“Do they all smell this good?” she asked, dipping in to sniff his forehead, her lipstick leaving a smudge of crimson in his fuzzy hair.

“In about two minute increments, every couple of hours, sure….” Snow replied, half-bitter sincerity, half-smile.

“Oh, come on, it can’t really be that bad,” Ruby teased, instinctively rocking from one foot to the other as she held him.

Snow smirked and took another sip of her tea, closing her eyes while she answered. “It’s nice, actually. I missed this with Emma, so I’m grateful for it but it’s more than I expected, to say the least.”

“How is she?” Ruby asked, careful to modulate her tone into an appropriate level of curiosity and keep her eyes fixed on the baby.

“She’s been amazing. It’s been nice to have her so close. She’s the only reason I’ve been able to shower…” And with that, she was off again, the answer to the question Ruby had really been asking lost amidst a sea of mommy babble, but it was nice to see Snow like this. The original curse shattered their relationship, and the time since it had broken had changed it irrevocably, but the bond they shared still lingered beneath the surface.

Gone were the days of the lonely bandit and the naive werewolf. (The lipstick smudge on the infant in her arms did little but punctuate that reality and she wondered if she could wipe it off without catching Snow’s notice.) Now, her friend was surrounded by the family she’d always wanted - the Prince she’d chased after, the daughter she’d been forced to give up, the grandson she never expected, and this brand new baby boy bridging the gaps - and she…well she wasn’t sure what she was. More world-wise, perhaps, and maybe more certain…certain that everything was bound to change and hopeful, she supposed, that it would always be for the better.

She handed him back when his coos became whimpers and his whimpers became cries, excusing herself before she had to find out the exact definition of the phrase 'cracked nipples’ with a not-quite lie about being hungry. She was starving, actually. Two, oddly hard and yet oddly soft, oatmeal raisin cookies had done little to take the edge off of a four mile run on an empty stomach and now, sitting in her cold car outside of the diner, she stared at the leather clad back at the counter and contemplated her options.

She could go in. It was her restaurant, after all. She worked there. He had to know there was a possibility she would be there. That might, she thought hopefully, have even been why he was there. Of course, she realized a moment later, he could have just as easily known she wouldn’t be. She could not go in…perhaps rifle through the kitchenette at the inn for another bag of microwave popcorn, but her growling stomach rejected that idea almost as soon as it had arrived.

Still undecided, footsteps crunching along the frozen sidewalk called her attention away and she realized with a jolt that it was Emma cutting through the patio area and heading for the entrance.

Throwing open her car door, she jumped up and called after her, forcing brightness into her tone as she rushed to catch up before Emma made it inside. “Hey stranger!”

Emma’s greeting came back short - not angry, just tense - and she continued walking toward the door. Awkwardly, Ruby rushed ahead of her, setting a hand on the door knob. “Here for lunch?”

“No. I just need to talk to Hook for a minute.” It was obvious to both of them what they were doing - the thin veneer of feigned ignorance dissipating by the second - but Emma didn’t seem to want to be the first one to break it. Stopping on the pavement, she conjured up a light grin and gestured toward the diner. “I need someone to watch Henry for a couple of hours. I thought they might like to spend some time together.”

“Emma, come on. You can’t.”

“Ruby, this really isn’t any of your business,” she hissed, eyes darting down toward the door handle.

“It’s not, and I’m not saying it is. We’re friends, Emma. You’ve always been good to me and I appreciate that. I’m not trying to get in the middle of whatever you two have going on, but you can’t barge in here and ask him for things now.”

“He cares about Henry,” she interrupted, shifting on her feet.

“Of course he does, and you know he’d do anything you asked - which is why you can’t. You broke his heart. He needs some time and some space. You have to see that.” She struggled to keep her voice gentle, but she could see the harshness of her words in Emma’s shifting expression - anger fading into sadness, compassion, and then regret. “Why don’t you let me take him? It’s my day off. I can come to your apartment and he can beat me at video games until you get back.”

“Regina is…”

“Not going to kidnap him. There’s no where for her to go.”

It felt disingenuous to defend a man she hadn’t spoken to in days, but the look on his face as he’d confessed his plans to leave was seared into her retinas and she couldn’t bear the thought seeing it repeated now - not today. They stared at eachother for a long moment, Emma shifting restlessly on her feet before slumping her shoulders and shaking her head. “Can you be there at seven?”

The wave of relief was still lapping at her consciousness when she pushed the door open, but it did little to soothe her worries about seeing him again. Emma’s little yellow bug was halfway down the block before she found the courage to step inside, and even that was more fear of frostbite than actual will. Stealing a guilty glance at him as she passed, she gave the counter a wide berth, shoving her gloves in her pocket so she could rub her numb fingers together on the way to the kitchen.

“Hey Eddie, can I get a bowl of soup to go?” she asked, shoving the swinging door open with her boot and poking her head in.

“You want the vegetable or the chili?” he asked, tossing a buttered bun and a handful of diced onions onto the griddle.

“Vegetable,” she answered. She was only half-paying attention to his next question, the feeling of a pair of eyes on the back of her neck making her skin crawl, but when she looked up, everyone’s attention was fixed firmly on either their plates or their tablemates and no one - especially not Killian - seemed to be looking at her. “Yeah, garlic bread would be great,” she added, hoping that was somewhere near the correct answer.

Nodding and mumbling an incoherent time in response, he flipped the onions and swung around back toward the coolers, leaving her with no more excuse to hide in the kitchen. Heading back into the dining room, she hesitated between an unoccupied two top and an empty stool. The table offered her solitude and a respectful distance from him, but she wondered if that was too loud of a statement. She never would have sat at a table to wait for an order - she’d wait at the counter. It would be weird. Then, at the counter, she’d be a scant two stools away from him - a distance too close to keep quiet in. After days of silence, what was there to say? 'Hello’ or “Where have you been?’ But what if he wasn’t avoiding her? What if she was accidentally avoiding him?

Feeling thoroughly awkward, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then, with one horrifying misstep, accidentally caught his gaze. A cold 'hey’ escaped her lips before she could stop herself and, sucking in oxygen through her nose in an effort to keep herself from blushing, she started to walk away on the pretext of…something she would come up with later…

Until he caught her wrist.

When she looked at him again, there was concern etched in every line of his face - the same pity she’d felt for him days before - and she felt the burn of embarrassment in every inch of her skin. "Ruby,” he murmured, pulling her a few inches closer and keeping his voice low. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” she lied, glancing desperately toward the kitchen as she let him guide her toward a stool.

He studied her for a moment more, trying to parse out the why behind all of her current weird, but her expression offered no answer and, when she looked at him again, she was forcing an unsteady smile.

“What have you been up to?” she asked, the feigned brightness in her tone tasting saccharine even on her tongue.

He shook his head and returned the favor of her lie - a cautiously elaborate tale of helping Leroy with his little sailboat project - to mask the reality of hours spent wandering the docks recalling every word of their conversation. If the solitude had served one purpose, it had been to further confuse him - about both his role in the story of this town, and the voice of the person now telling it.

He no longer saw the girl he met in the hospital, and he knew he was no longer that revenge obsessed man. She was smarter than that and so much more perceptive than he - or anyone, really - gave her credit for either here or at home and - since his brief visit to a time lost - he found it difficult not to also see the brazen woman who stood, unafraid, at the point of his sword. Listening to her talk about who and what she was with messy hair and a handmade blanket falling over her shoulders, he heard pieces of both but, looking at her now, he tried to fathom what might be teeming below the surface of this person who had bothered to become his friend. It occurred to him with crippling certainty that the piece he’d been missing - the thing he hadn’t been paying attention to - was the shame and, for a flicker of an instant, he regretted every moment he’d let pass in self-indulgent contemplation.

Smiling genuinely into the silence, he tipped his head to catch her gaze and drummed his fingertips against the formica. “You know I told Leroy how much I’ve been enjoying those dinosaur films you keep showing me, and he let on that there might be a third. I don’t suppose you’re free this evening?”


	5. Five

Lying was actually not something she was used to, and it wasn’t something she felt terribly good at either. So, while her first reaction to his invitation was relief, it was quickly followed by blind terror as she stammered her way through an excuse he obviously didn’t believe. She was spared further embarrassment by the arrival of her soup and took it back to the inn to eat, killing time until six thirty, when it became at least somewhat reasonable to head over to Emma’s.

Still, as she snuck back in - well after midnight and with an ache in her neck from too many hours spent sitting on the floor looking up at the television - she stopped outside his door for a moment and listened to the sound of his snoring. It was steady and even and suddenly she felt very, very, very stupid. Stupid for ever thinking that he would be the kind of person who would judge her for who and what she was. Stupid for imagining that he thought about her often enough to bother avoiding her. Stupid for believing he couldn’t handle hearing that she was babysitting his ex’s son and at least sixteen different kinds of stupid for letting herself waste her entire day off fixating on all of it.

Grabbing a pad of the hotel stationary from the hallway table, she scribbled down a note, sliding the slip under the door and went up to bed, feeling more like herself than she had in days.

The comfort of knowing she was a moron carried her through the next morning and most of the next day. Running back to her room to change after her shift, she piled on layer after warm layer and bounded down to the lobby to meet him.

“You’re prompt,” she remarked, finding him sitting in an overstuffed arm chair with a pained, Granny-induced expression on his face.

“You’re not,” he retorted, getting to his feet with an apologetic little nod to her grandmother. “Lovely as always,” he lied, excusing himself from their tortured conversation.

Eyeing them both suspiciously, Granny settled her gaze on Ruby and looped another strand of yarn over her fingers. “You open tomorrow,” she said without explanation, earning a similarly obvious response from Ruby. “It might be nice if you weren’t late for a change…”

“I’ll do my best,” Ruby shot back, wrapping her scarf around her neck and moving for the door.

“It might also be nice not to get woken up in the middle of the night when you come in,” she called after them as they left.

Descending the steps two at a time, Killian cast a glance over his shoulder and smirked. “She’s a spitfire…”

“Didn’t you call me that once?” Ruby asked, raising an eyebrow and gesturing down the sidewalk.

“Aye, but when I said it to you, I meant it to be a compliment, love,” he replied, following her for a moment before asking where they were going.

She answered him more evasively than he might have liked - promising only that they were going somewhere fun. It was duplicity he thought he understood when she ushered him inside the body shop. “Just trust me,” she whispered, giving him a shove into the waiting room and continuing to push him forward around a tangle of dirty chairs and old magazines. She stopped only when they hit the arcade consoles.

Tucked into the back corner of the garage, it was Henry who reminded her that they existed. She’d spent hundreds of hours here under the last curse, ignoring Billy’s countless lectures about taking it easy on her transmission and playing games to kill the time. The high score animations on either machine were still half her name and half Henry’s.

Pulling a roll of quarters out of her jacket pocket, she cracked it on the case, dropping a couple into the slot and setting his fingers on the brightly colored buttons before looping his hook around the joystick.

“Up to jump, down to roll, left shoots fire balls and…just don’t even touch the red one yet,” she urged, stepping out of the way. He looked back at her, confused and a little amused - starting to say ‘I don’t understand’ - but snapped his attention back to the game when the music changed.

He worked his way through the entire roll, plus every piece of loose change in her pockets. To his credit, the longer he played, the better he got, but his combined scores wouldn’t have come close to even half of her lowest high score - a tidbit she reminded him of as they walked down the main street with cups of frozen yogurt in hand, passing all of the little places that made Storybrooke what it was.

“You’ve got two hands,” he complained. “It’s hardly a fair comparison.”

She rolled her eyes, slowing to a stop in front of a little boutique to inspect the mannequins in the window. For nearly three decades, they’d been the same, but now they seemed to be changing almost daily. On the inside, the shop owner - someone Ruby didn’t recognize - stripped a little plaid jacket off of one and tried it on another. Aware of him at her side, his warmth radiating into the empty space between them, she tilted her head to glance at him before replying. “So, tell me, Killian, do you use your one handedness as an excuse for all of your shortcomings or just the electronic ones?”

Feigning insult, he braked his spoon in mid-air. “You’re cruel when you’re feeling smug.”

“You’re smug when you’re feeling conscious,” she snapped back, smiling at him and twisting a finger around his hook, pulling him toward the door. “Come on.”

“Why?” he asked, feet firmly planted on the concrete - actually resisting her this time.

“Come inside…”

“Ruby, why?” he repeated, still not moving from where he stood, one skeptical eyebrow arched toward the stars.

“Because I think we can update your leather a little,” she said with a wink, giving him another tug. “More biker less halloween costume….maybe throw in some flannel….”

He considered her for a moment, trying to gauge her level of seriousness. The answer made his stomach lurch - written all over the mischievous little glint in her eyes. That was the thing about her, there was lethality under the surface. “I may no longer have a ship,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “but I will always be a pirate.”

She looked at him with a judgemental smirk, dropping his hook, and asked, “So this whole…look is a pirate thing, then?”

“Let me be clear, under absolutely no circumstances am I ever letting you dress me,” he replied, tone dripping with severity and disdain as his tongue rolled around the words.

For a moment, she looked some version of disappointed, but the impulse seemed to pass almost as soon as it had come, replaced with yet another smile and yet another whim. “You’re loss. I’d have made you look hot.”

“If 'hot’ is some facsimile for attractive in this realm, I assure you, I’m quite handsome enough on my own,” he called, chasing after her on the sidewalk at double step. Asking, “Where are we going?” when her reply to his admittedly self-aggrandizing remark was nothing, save silence.

“You’ll see.”

“Ruby….” He stopped again, footsteps slowing on the pavement until she was forced to turn around. “What is this?”

She had an upturned spoonful of frozen yogurt between her teeth when she looked at him and, as she drew out the little piece of pink plastic, her breath came out in a visible little puff. He watched the curls of vapor weave through her hair as they dissipated, waiting for her answer. It wasn’t that he wasn’t enjoying himself. On the contrary - as it had been in her room a few nights before, it wasn’t discomfort but ease that made him question the moment. In the dead of an unforgiving, seemingly unceasing winter, and for no particular reason he could identify, Ruby was pulling him from one obscure part of town to the next for video games, frozen confections, gas station candy, and - apparently - window shopping. They were laughing and talking as if they’d known one another for years and, in a way, he supposed, they had, but there was something foreign about it that made him hesitate.

Pulling the spoon out of her mouth with one long drag across her lips, she stuffed it back into the cup and tossed them both into a nearby trash can. When she looked up, the ever present grin she kept plastered to her face had fallen. 

No, he thought, it hadn’t fallen - it collapsed. It crumbled. It toppled. It shattered. It caved in. It was as if the weight of every word she’d left unsaid that evening and the one before it was weighing at the corners of her mouth and, for a moment, they both thought she might cry.

Scrambling to fill the silence with something, he stammered an apologetic “Not that I mind,” but she ignored him, letting out a heavy sigh.

“You said you were leaving. I didn-”

“Ruby…”

“No, come on. You did. And then you disappeared for a couple of days and I just…. You haven’t been here that long and when you were here you were here with Emma and she hasn’t been here that long and… I just thought that if I could show the parts of Storybrooke nobody notices, you would have to fall in love with it a little bit. It was stupid.”

“It wasn-”

“Yeah, it was,” she said, interrupting him again, her smile still not returned. “Look, it’s cold and it’s getting late.”

She was walking toward him again. Well, not quite toward him so much as past him - back along the path they’d taken, heading toward the inn. He tossed his own ice cream into the trash and threw out his arm to stop her, taking hold of her shoulder and spinning her back around. She whined at him to let her go but he declined, ushering her along the sidewalk once more.

“Where are we going?” she moped, each petulant step thudding on the pavement beneath her feet.

“You don’t have to tell me but I have to tell you?”

“I actually know where I’m going, so yeah, you sort of do,” she fired back, glowering at the pavement in front of them.

It occurred to him to point out the excellent navigational skills that came with a few centuries of piracy, but this hardly seemed the moment for more ego so he settled for giving her shoulder a squeeze. “We’re going to my favorite place in Storybrooke.”  
The docks. She was expecting the docks. She realized, far too late, that they were going the wrong direction for him to be taking her to the docks and, for a few harrowing moments before he selected a side-street, she worried they may be going somewhere far worse - like the bait and tackle shop or Leroy’s sad little rented room - but it was her shock at their eventual destination that surprised her more than anything.

“The Rabbit Hole? The only thing you like about Storybrooke is The Rabbit Hole?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. He held the door open, guiding her inside with the curve of his hook resting on the small of her back and she smirked as she passed, stripping off her gloves and shoving them in her coat pocket.

Following along behind, he slid into the stool next to hers and gestured for the bartender, smiling easily. “No. The only thing I like about Storybrooke, at the moment, is you….and forced air heating”

An unbidden heat crept into her cheeks and she hoped she’d be able to blame it on the windburn. He wasn’t flirting - he couldn’t have meant to be - but it colored her crimson nonetheless and she glanced over at Danny for the distraction before answering him, forcing the blush out of her face. “And rum.”

“Always rum,” he teased.

Danny appeared, as if from nowhere, unearthing a bottle from beneath the bar and pouring a few fingers into a glass, sliding it to Killian. “The usual?” he asked, looking at Ruby. She nodded and he reached for a martini glass.

When he left, she was spinning a cosmo between her fingers, watching the light refract through the membranes of the lime wedge and trying to think of something to say next. The conversation that had flowed so easily all evening seemed to be evading her now and she tried not to meet his eyes, afraid she’d blush again.

“You’re hardly a stranger here,” he remarked.

“At least I had to order mine,” she shot back, stealing a glance at him from behind her glass.

“Do you really expect me to believe Ruby Lucas hasn’t been subject of a fair number of conquests in this bar?”

Rolling her eyes, she found her voice again, spinning around to lean back against the bar. “You men are unbelievable. 'Conquest’ - like it always has to be a predator and prey thing.” He smiled and took another drink, watching her but not interrupting. “And worse, you all insist that you’re the cat and she’s the mouse. It’s barbaric.”

“No one has ever mistaken you for the mouse, I suspect.”

“No one worth mentioning, anyway,” she joked, reaching back to pick up her drink.

“Now you have to mention them.”

“Uh-uh,” she warned, shaking her head. “This is a tiny, tiny, tiny town. No way am I giving you that kind of ammunition.”

“You do realize that I’ve had occasion, in my 350 years, to keep a secret or two that’s slightly more salacious than the details of a failed attempt to woo you.”

“How does that work now, anyway? The whole 'being 350 years old’ thing?”

She changed the subject with all the grace of Anton in a flamingo pink tutu, jumping on a trampoline, but subtlety wasn’t really what she was aiming for. Nevertheless, he leveled her with a glare that said he understood every bit of both her nuanced (and, she thought, deliciously lewd) implication and her shifting attentions before launching into the timeline so few people bothered to ask for.

He skipped over Liam, his first trip to Neverland, and Milah as much as possible, picking up the thread of the story with Wendy, Pan, and the lost boys. Talking his way through centuries of sword fights, she pressed him for more information about Tink and asked if he still visited any of the lost boys now that they were in Storybrooke, genuinely interested in a life so far removed from her own. It was surprising how quickly, how easily, and how readily he revealed things he hadn’t otherwise intended to, but his past seemed as safe in her hands as he’d promised her secrets were in his. It was a pact neither of them seemed likely to break and he didn’t stop talking until he ran out of things to say, only then bringing his answer back around to the scope of the question. “It’s not unlike your curse, I imagine. Just longer.”

With her now empty glass sitting on the bar next to her elbow, she drummed her fingers idly against her lips and contemplated him, letting out a theatrical little sigh.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Her meaning dawning on him, a lecherous grin slid across his face, settling itself into his features. “You’re fairly horrible, do you know?”

“I didn’t say anything!” she protested, adding a quiet, “Not that I don’t appreciate the information…”

“Refills?” Danny asked, appearing - as he always did - at the most comedically inconvenient moment.

“God yes.”


	6. Six

The bathroom mirror proved itself to be as cruel a place as always when she awoke the next morning, her alarm stirring her from sleep much earlier than it had a right to, and the similarly unforgiving reflection her mirror offered did little to soften the blow. She had a vague recollection of coming back to the inn last night, faint traces of a conversation on the porch that were more essence than memory - a sense of something rather than the concrete knowledge of it - but it made her heart race in any case - his warm breath on her cool skin and the exciting uneasiness of another person’s fingertips on hers.

The moment had been insignificant - gratitude and a friendly touch - but it sparked something in her blood that wouldn’t be stilled. In a way, it felt a lot like the sum of every moment they’d shared. He had, himself, crept up on her slowly - entering her life as little more than another letch but weaving himself ever more among the moments…until now, when it was all she could do not to close her eyes and listen for him - steady breathing, asleep in his room two floors below.

Looking back, she supposed she should have seen it coming, but somehow it surprised her - the unsteady nerves, the too warm smiles, and the electricity that passed between them with every accidental or inconsequential touch. Perhaps it was because she could scarcely recall the last time anyone had made her feel this much, or maybe it was simply that she truly never intended for it to happen. In the end, it hardly mattered. His feelings for Emma and her own not insignificant lycan unappeal rendered her reality moot but for a moment last night, with his hand on her wrist, she imagined that it might be something else and it was that instant she couldn’t seem to shake this morning.

Staring into the glass, she tugged at the dark circles under her eyes, still visible under a thick layer of concealer and reached for the light switch, turning her back on the ever present reflection of the moon. It hovered there, over her shoulder, long after the sun rose and Leroy finished his first plate of bacon. Even now, with the searing light of a winter afternoon engulfing Storybrooke, she could feel it - that tidal pull on her heart - holding her back. The bitter chill of the sidewalk felt like sweet relief after the suffocating heat of the Rabbit Hole, however, and she took a gulp of icy air before resuming her solitary trek, spinning her abandoned credit card between her fingers.

Laid out like a crime scene, the dark bar had stretched out for what miles in front of her - a tangled web of barstools, empty glasses, and discarded cherry stems, and each one threatened her with some fresh memory of a smile, a laugh, or a loaded joke. Just visible behind the taps, Danny was shuffling a keg into place. He tried to chat, but something seemed to be choking off her voice, and she found little more than a ‘hello’ and a 'goodbye’ before bursting through the doors again.

Once outside, however, she had no idea what to do. There scarcely seemed to be a place in Storybrooke that couldn’t remind her of him now, and the realization of what she was feeling made her skin itch. Mechanically, she forced her feet to make some purposeful movement forward, turning a corner with no real sense of direction, and then another a moment later. She didn’t stop until she heard voices drifting down the alley way from a block or two away.

Freezing in place, her brain scrambling for some bland explanation for her mindless wandering, it took a moment to register that one of the voices she was hearing belonged to Emma…and the other to Killian.

Too far to hear their words, she picked up only traces of their tone - Emma’s voice hard, while his seemed colder even than the afternoon. Decency alone should have stopped her from listening, distance after that, and deference to her own emotional health and well-being as an oft ignored last resort, but she crept closer to the edge of the block nonetheless, careful to keep her footfalls quiet and light - ….toe to heel, toe to heel…. - until the sounds began to resolve themselves into stolen syllables.

“You’re not being fair, Hook,” she was protesting, angry and annoyed.

“I’ve done a number of unfair things in my lifetime, but you’re scarcely qualified to condemn me for them, and certainly not for this,” he whispered, low and dark and rife with pain.

Emma replied, but every third word was being drowned out by the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. The constant rush of blood echoed back inside the empty hollow of her skull until she could hear nothing but her worst fears and her greatest hopes threatening to tear her in two. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to walk away. Inching a few paces closer, she pressed her back to the brick and strained again, startled when the sounds she found were footsteps and not sharply delivered subtext.

“Ruby,” he stammered, as unsettled to see her as she’d been to find him. “What are yo-”

“Credit card,” she blurted, adding “Forgot it at the bar last night,” before waving it in the air for a second. He nodded, too distracted to pay her any real attention and opened his mouth to reply, but the words got lost somewhere before his larynx and no sound materialized. “What about you?” she asked after a few beats, watching him watch the place where Emma had stood.

Seemingly re-entering the world, he raked his hand through his hair, stopping for a moment to touch the little spot behind his ear he always reached for when he was uneasy. “I was overdue for a flagellation. You heard, I assume.”

“No, I just wal-” she started to lie, thinking better of it when he leveled her with one of his sardonic, arched-eyebrow glares. “A little.”

“Aye,” he remarked to no one except himself, hesitating on the sidewalk for another moment before turning back toward the inn. “It’s cold. Let’s get you back inside.”

The silence that fell between them as they walked did not extend to her psyche, mind a swirling torrent of conflicting thoughts and unbidden feelings broken only by their footfalls on the concrete. Her mood, already unsteady in the influence of the moon, threatened to give way under the weight of both possibility and practicality. With one breath, she found herself imagining the shape of his lips as he promised to love her and, with the next, she forced herself to remember the very real number of times he’d promised to love Emma. In the next, a surge of optimism, followed by a vivid picture of every person who had ever looked on her with revulsion reserved only for the hybrid ans strange. Neither pursuit seemed to be bringing her any sense of stability and, when she could stand the quiet madness no more, she said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m so, so sorry, Killian.”

His answering sigh came out in a huff of visible breath - ice crystals hovering in the air before them while they waited for the light to change - staring off into the emptiness of the street. “I am, occasionally, very wrong about people.”

For a moment, she wondered if he, too, had just realized her words were meant to absolve her own thoughts more than Emma’s actions, but the forlorn little smile he offered her restored her heart to it’s normal rhythm. Across the street, a friendly white WALK signal flashed at them and, though she made no effort to move, he did, setting his hand on the small of her back and, again, ushering her forward. The contact - even through a layer of leather and another of cotton - sent another unwanted flood of sickening hope into her veins that his reply did little to quell. “I thought that if I was patient, she might let me in, but there’s something tragic about Emma that I underestimated - she’s not capable of that.”

“If you lo-”

“Ruby, don’t”

“No. Listen to me. You deserve to have everything you want.” With the front door mere feet in front of them, she stopped where she stood, stomach lurching, and caught his coat. When he turned to look at her, her resolve temporarily faltered - the words she’d meant to say disappearing. Worse, she thought she might say what she meant - echoes of 'Me, Killian - right here. I want you to come in.’ threatening to escape - but instead, she steadied her breathing and searched his world weary eyes with hers. “You do. You love her, you can’t l-”

“I don’t,’ he said, taking his turn to interrupt her, jaw set in an angry line. "I loved someone that I thought she was.”

“Killian, that’s not fair. She’s….”

She experienced herself speaking in slow motion - the words spilling from her lips and hanging for an eternity - but they were gone before she could stop them, an echo of the very thing Emma had accused him of mere minutes before. Without preamble, he freed himself from her grip, twining his fingers over hers just long enough to loosen them, and darted down the sidewalk. He headed neither toward the docks, nor The Rabbit Hole. Instead, his footsteps seemed to be aimed not at taking him toward something, but rather at moving him away from her.

Turning on her heel, she considered following him but felt the swell of warm tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks already and sunk onto the steps instead, quiet shudders racking her shoulders as the sun slipped behind the treeline.


	7. Seven

In the solitude of her room a few hours later, Ruby found herself confronting the mirror again, seeing in it nothing of value. There had never been a place that felt, to her, like home but people - people like Snow, David, Emma, Henry, Victor, Granny, and now Killian - had helped her to make something like one here and, though none of them were yet aware, she’d been betraying them all for weeks.

Floss wrapped around fingers on either hand, she was struggling to dislodge a particularly stubborn piece of arugula from between two of her molars, when it started to happen - blood pounding in her ears for a moment before she began to taste it on her tongue. The floss snapped in two, her once blunt teeth now sharp, cutting a gash in her hand as she drew it from her mouth. Trying to swear but finding only a soft growl, she yanked the curtains closed and rushed into the bedroom, flipping open the trunk at the foot of her bed and fumbling for the cloak she suddenly realized she wouldn’t find there.

With a lurch in her stomach, she remembered it - discarded on the banister downstairs - and, already starting to feel her bones flex beneath her skin, she knew there wasn’t time to retrieve it. Willing the world not to dissolve, she tried to lock the bedroom door, but her injured hand was transforming already, the bolt too complex for her to turn and the wood far too thin to contain her. Dropping onto all fours, her sobs turned to whimpers, yelps, and the gnashing of teeth as she willed the world around her not to dissolve, focusing not on fighting the wolf, but the darkness.

The time that passed could have been hours as easily as minutes, every ounce of her effort expended at clinging to the faint thread of control she held. Years of sleeping beneath the safety of her cloak had left her out of practice with an effort not easily performed even with a clear, unconflicted mind. In her current state, it was nearly impossible, but she struggled against it nonetheless, her colorful room rendering itself in shades of red and blue.

Through the dissonance of her mind and the noise of her breathing, a voice in the hallway began to break through. It called her name and, for a moment, she felt herself flooded with relief. Inching toward the door, she lowered her head, expecting her grandmother, her cloak, and the comfort it would bring, but the feet that shuffled across the hardwood belonged to no old woman. Instinctively, she drew back - lithe muscles tightening as she sprung into a defensive position. Scratching at the floor, she snarled at the intruder, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Hook didn’t back away. On the contrary, he closed the door behind himself, seemingly trying to soothe her. Snapping her teeth, she tried to urge him to leave, the wolf crowding her back into the tiniest corner of her mind, but he stood fast.

“Ruby…Ruby, it’s all right…”

They were the last sounds the wolf heard.

A moment later, he was shaking the cloak out over her, and she was herself again - exhausted, disheveled, humiliated, and ashamed, but human nonetheless. Resisting his help, she forced herself to her feet, grateful for the first time for the way her hood hid her face. Eyes, already red from hours of crying, were streaming again with angry tears as she rounded on him, ignoring the pain in her hand and shoving him toward the door. He stumbled over an overturned chair but she shouted at him anyway, giving him another shove. “What were you thinking?”

“Ruby…”

“I could’ve hurt you! I could’ve killed you!”

She pushed him again and, when he’d backed his way into the door and she could push him no more, she began hitting him instead - two manicured fists pounding against his chest. He made no movement to stop her until her fury had faded into fear and her shouting into sobs, pulling her into a tight hug. She struggled against that too, but only for a moment. Still, he didn’t release her until her panicked breathing had slowed to the rhythm of his heartbeat, letting her go slowly.

“I could have killed you,” she murmured again, wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve.

“A risk I was willing to take,” he reminded her, gently brushing the hood back from her face. She begged him to stop, but he ignored her, tucking the curve of his hook beneath her chin and tilting her face into the light. He turned her first to the left, and then to the right, tipping his head to inspect the smear of blood on her cheek.

“I’ve got it,” she said, accidentally using her injured hand to wipe it away.

“That cut is jagged,” he countered, reaching for her.

“It’s no big deal,” she said, jerking it away.

“Ple-”

“I’ve done this before, Killian. I’ve got it.”

He watched her walk away, her first few steps taken hesitantly and the rest in a rush, waiting until she’d closed the bathroom door before he moved, not sure which one of them he was trying not to spook. The sound had been unmistakable the moment he crossed the threshold, and the cloak over the banister confirmed his worst fears, but it wasn’t until he was facing her that he realized his concern wasn’t for himself or for Storybrooke, but for her. She was formidable in either form, but seeing her locked up in this tiny room, he realized for the first time that the girl was far more powerful than the wolf, and that she’d have torn herself apart to keep from hurting another soul.

Righting the chair and straightening the rug, he let himself sink down into the sofa cushions, rubbing his bloodied fingers together in silence until she reemerged.

She’d washed her face and droplets of water still clung to her eyelashes, but she didn’t move to sit beside him, leaning against the desk instead, her tone wholly new. “How did you know?”

Straightening up and arching an eyebrow, he wiped his hand on the hem of his shirt. “Wolves aren’t exactly quiet creatures when confined, magical or otherwise….”

“No, I meant my cloak. I left it downstairs….that’s wh-How did you know?”

Sighing, he leaned back again and began to explain - the portal, the snapped twig, the change in the timeline, the deal with Rumple, the arrest, and the subsequent escape plan. There were some details (Emma’s first dance, Ruby’s rather brazen introduction, and a fair bit of personal embarrassment) that he kept just for himself, but with little other exception, he recounted the entire tale without stopping, breaking only when she began to tear up again.

She’d come to sit beside him sometime after David’s introduction, pulling a throw pillow into her lap and hugging it with her bandaged hand during her own debut, but now he was chasing eye contact and asking what was wrong, immediately regretting whatever it was he’d said.

“Nothing,” she whispered, laughing at herself as she sniffled.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just…I didn’t know you’d seen me…like that….before.”

“I didn’t know it mattered,” he hedged, catching her distant gaze.

Scoffing, she reached for a box of kleenex on the coffee table and blew her nose, only answering him when she’d rubbed it red. “Of course it matters. It always matters.”

Frowning, he turned toward her, hitching one leg up onto the couch but careful to keep his boots off of the upholstery lest Granny’s psychic connection to dirt and grime send her storming through the door. When she looked up at him again, the puffy eyed sniffles providing a sharp contrast to the sinewy creature that had threatened him twenty minutes ago, he couldn’t help but think he was dealing with the more formidable of the pair now.

“It shouldn’t.” She grimaced and turned away, but he didn’t stop, letting his hand find hers and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Ever.”

Sniffling again, she reached for another kleenex but stopped, dropping her free hand into her lap and letting out an exasperated little sigh. “God, I’m so sorry, Killian. For what I said and for…your shirt…which I think I ruined… I shouldn’t have butted in. I just want you to be happy and I know you want her and I wish I could fix-”

“Easy, love. Stop.”

“No, I shouldn’t have said that. I upset you and I-”

“Ruby,” he said again, expression softening to dull the edges of his sharp tone as she worked her way back toward another breakdown. “I got caught up in wanting someone I thought she might be and you were right, that wasn’t fair.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He went quiet for a few beats and she let him, fidgeting with the crumpled up tissue on her lap and wondering what he might say. When he did finally speak, he squeezed her hand again and, this time, she squeezed back, sensing the unease in his tone. “There’s a man I was once and I’ve struggled to become someone better. I used to believe it was for Emma, but I think it was more than that. You calling me unfair…. It felt like I’d failed.”

“Killian no,” she managed, shock weaving its way in and out of her words. “You’re…perfect. Look, I know this is just what it is and that’s OK. I get it and I’m not…but you? You’re kind and generous and heroic and thoughtful and funny and brave and…perfect.”

Taken aback, he didn’t respond, and the silence gave her enough time to realize what she’d said, a shade of crimson deeper than her cloak creeping into her cheeks. “Oh god,” she murmured, jumping to her feet. “Oh my god…”

“Ruby…”

“No, Killian. Really, I swear I…forget I ever said any of that, OK?” she begged, trying to tug her fingers free from his and hoping for another one of Regina’s curses to come sweeping the town and destroy any memory of the last ten minutes.

“I d-” he started, getting to his feet, but she cut him off, backing away again.

“Don’t say it. I swear to god, don’t say it. I get it. We are friends. I didn’t mean to….” Her voice finally faltered when he brought his hook to her waist, pulling her back to him again.

“Shhh…”


	8. Eight

Swiping a towel over the mirror - she hates it when he uses his palm - and flicking on the fan, he ran his hand over the two week old scruff growing on his chin and contemplated it. Red and coming in thicker by the day, he considered letting it grow, but remembered the weather outside of the air conditioned bubble of their apartment and thought the better of it. Still, as he stared at his reflection in the glass, he couldn’t bring himself to reach for the razor - too many minutes already wasted in this humid room for a slow Sunday morning. So many evils and so many obstacles had come to Storybrooke in his short tenure that it felt odd to be without one and yet, there they were. His job at the docks and hers at the diner, meals shared on their tiny balcony overlooking the water, and the book she always read before bed - a routine as ingrained as any that came before it, and he found himself grateful for all of it.

In their bedroom - visible through the partly open door - she’d stolen all of his pillows, propping herself up with her book balanced on her knees. Watching her through the gap with a towel slung around his waist, he felt almost as if he was interrupting something. It wasn’t that she looked peaceful - in fact, she looked engrossed. Rather, it was her perfection that had him feeling every part the interloper. Leaning on the door jamb, he watched her turn the pages one by one. The sheets, once neatly spread across the mattress, were tangled up around her torso. Already, both of her long legs were stretched out and bare. With each movement, the fabric slipped lower on her chest, but she didn’t seem to notice - utterly unaware of the universe spinning around her.

Already he could feel his tongue slipping between his teeth and tracing across his lips, imagining how it would feel to run each taste bud across her skin, and while he knew that she would welcome his attention - that if she caught him watching her as he was now, she would smile and relinquish a pillow or two - he prefered to watch her like this; perfect, calm, and utterly consumed.

Alas, their bathroom door creaked when opened - hinges rusted from one too many damp, Maine seasons and hot, steamy shower. The sound made her look up and he wondered if it was her gaze or the cool rush of air that made his damp skin prickle - tingling as if he’d been electrocuted. As predicted, she offered him a contrite little grin and wrenched one of the pillows out from behind her back, setting it back on his side of the bed.

Perhaps it was the echoes of days and nights past, or perhaps it was the way the fabric had fallen into her lap, but he licked his lips again, feeling another jolt course through his veins.

Absently, he raked his hand through his beard.

She’d become like oxygen in his lungs - necessary, constant, and, while never quite taken for granted, sorely missed the moment she was gone. With eagerness settling into his very bones, he pushed the door open the rest of the way and padded across the hardwood, tossing aside his towel and crawling back into the bed beside her.

The faint scent of sex still clung to the sheets from the night before - the smell of sweat, oxytocin, and her perfume wafting into the room as he shook them out over himself and pressed in next to her. Propping himself up on his bad arm, he leaned into her shoulder and dropped a trail of gentle kisses along her clavicle, starting at the outside point and creeping ever closer to the hollow of her throat. She tolerated him for a moment, a soft hum vibrating against his lips as she appreciated his proximity, but when his hand snaked across the outside of her thigh, she shrugged him off, murmuring his name like an admonition. 

Undeterred, she reached for the book in her hands but she pushed him away. Elbow connecting with the void between his sixth and seventh rib firmly - though not quite painfully - he watched her eyes loop back to the top of the page and start again and wondered, idly, how she could feel as if she could still need to read the words on a page she’d poured over a thousand times before. Letting his head fall, momentarily, onto her arm, he reached his hand up to tilt her book toward himself but she snatched it away before his fingers could touch the paper. 

“You’re wet,” she chided and, looking up at her, he tried to decide if it was possible for a person to glower lightly. If it was, she was doing it now. Her eyes, cast down on his from behind the reading glasses she kept hidden in the nightstand, were wry as she observed him - impatient, but somehow amused and it made him smile which, in turn, made her smile. 

Satisfied, he decided it was and picked his head up, not to abandon his pursuit but rather to enjoy it. Scooting down the mattress, he nosed his way beneath her arms and began kissing across her torso. One for each faint freckle in the constellation just to the left of her navel. Another for the small scar beneath her right breast. She was covered in little marks like these. It took months, but he’d asked about them all and memorized their stories one at a time. Now, he caught himself revisiting his favorites - unable to resist sucking at the tiny white crescent on her hand (remnant from their first night together) or nibbling at the long gash on her inner thigh (a metal fence from her first lycan sprint through Storybrooke). They felt like a roadmap only he could read - the truths of all her lives written in pale but permanent ink all over her skin - and he often lost himself in it, swiping his tongue across a scar he left himself. 

There was a time when he shied away from it - the mark he left with his hook - because it reminded him of the shame he felt when he made it. Remembering it now, he thought of the weeks he couldn’t bring himself to look at it, afraid he might suffocate under the weight of the metaphor - his hook marring that perfect creature he loved so much. Thought of how he carefully kept it away from her after that and how delicately he touched her, and then he thought of how he’d found her one evening smiling into the mirror as she ghosted her fingers over it and how long he’d stared. Thought of how she laughed when he apologized. Thought of how deeply she blushed when she told him it reminded her of a headrush she couldn’t come down from when he slammed her back against the wall and tore at her clothes. Thought of her chewing her bottom lip when she admitted it was the first time she’d ever been sure of how desperately he wanted her. Thought of how that was the moment his very last fear evaporated.

Coming back to the present reality, he raked stubble across her stomach and tried to knock the book from her hands but, again, she pulled it out of his reach. In the fraction of a second it took her to grab him by the hair and yank him out of the way, he managed to sneak his teeth around one pert little nipple and she yelped a little as it slipped free, a mix of pain and pleasure still fading from her face when he righted himself again.

Resolutely, she went back to her reading but he remained dauntless, considering her for a moment before taking hold of their sheets and throwing them off the bed with a triumphant little smirk. Shivering, she dropped her hands and the book into her lap before asking “Are you four years old?”

Killian grinned and wrenched it out of her fingers, setting it carefully on the nightstand before leaning in to steal the kiss he’d been after all morning. His lips, alas, were met with the flat of her palm, fingers curling over his eyebrows and cheeks. "I’m gross,“ she promised, pushing him away. "I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

“No amount of morning breath could make you ‘gross’, love,” he argued, rising up onto his knees and zigging (or was it zagging?) to free himself from her grip before trying again. His efforts were to little avail, though, as she clamped her hand over her own mouth and scrunched up her nose, shaking her head when he reached for her.

Contemplating her for a moment, he tested the power of the sad puppy dog eyes and, when that failed too, settled on a different course of action entirely. Looping his fingers around both of her ankles, he yanked her down the mattress, and pushed her knees apart, locking his shoulders between her thighs before she had an opportunity to protest. 

There were moments when he wanted to devour her. To consume every ounce of pleasure, of comfort, of respite, and of home that she had to offer. To drown in the sensations her body provided. To lose his mind in imagining hers. And there were others, like this one, when he longed for pleasure only as an extension of hers, selfishly prolonging every single touch. Closing his eyes, he permitted himself a moment to overload his senses, relying on the sounds of her whimpering and the texture of her skin to guide his lips, relishing in every little noise she made as soft scruff tickled sensitive skin.

Minutes passed before he so much as pressed a delicate kiss to her clit, teasing and torturing every other inch of her instead so that when his lips finally brushed over it, tongue slipping out to take that first taste, she buried her fingers in his hair and refused to let him move away again. Within moments, she was arching off the mattress, rolling her hips into his tongue and mumbling his name - begging him to make her come. 

It would have been so easy, and so simply satisfying, to slip two fingers inside of her and give her what she wanted - to feel the way she quivered as she dissolved - but he knew it would be over all too quickly. He wanted to enjoy her, just as she was. Instead, he snuck that arm beneath himself, seeking relief more than release as he wrapped his hand around his cock in a lazy motion too slow to distract him from the woman writhing beneath his lips.

When she finally did come, his jaw ached almost as much as his cock, and her hips bucked off the bed, knocking his lip back into his teeth hard enough to draw blood, but he merely smiled, not relenting until, with a flood of incoherent babble and a sharp tug on his hair, she pulled him away, dragging one leg up to keep him from touching skin yet too sensitive to be further explored. 

Like a spark passed between them, each delicate brush of his skin on hers as he slid his way up her body made her shudder. Little shivers and long rolling tremors were still racking her slim frame when he leaned in to kiss her but she managed to push him away, pretty manicured hand tangling itself in his beard.

“I’m gross.”

“Actually,” he mumbled, the words garbled by the fingers she pressed into his face. “I found you rather delicious.” It was said for effect but he wasn’t lying. The scent of her - the taste of her - clung to his lips and the thought of it had him grinding his hips into hers, an almost inaudible rumble following each word.

Again, she resisted and, glancing over at the clock on the nightstand, she wedged an arm between them and pushed him onto his side without preamble, picking up her discarded book from the floor as she passed. 

“Love, I think I’ve faced worse than seven hours without a tooth brush!” he called after her, stealing one of the pillows from her abandoned fortress and shoving it behind his head before returning his hand to its unhurried rhythm on his cock. "And if you’re that dreadfully concerned, I can think of at least one delightful way you might ensure I’m too occupied to try kissing you…" he added a moment later, impatience getting the better of him as he imagined her hands replacing his - her lips slipping from tip to base, the vibrations her every sound would throw, and that relentless little twirl of her tongue. 

Forcing himself to relinquish his grip when his suggestion received no reply, he dragged himself from the mattress and pushed the bathroom door open, disturbed to find her with a toothbrush in one hand and a towel in the other.  
“The shower?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. "I’m nothing if not up for a challenge.“

"Please,” she remarked, rolling her eyes. "Has anyone ever enjoyed shower sex? Besides, we have to meet Snow and David for lunch.“

He hesitated for a moment and she watched his face fall - collapsing under what seemed to be a horrifying reality. Unbidden, a wave of frustration was overtaking him and he caught himself flushing, hand flexing in and out of a fist at his side. It could hardly be called Ruby’s fault, nor Snow’s or David’s for that matter, but still he searched for someone to blame. Between his legs, his cock twitched merrily, seemingly the only part of his body unaware of the current predicament. 

Noticing, Ruby smirked and stepped in closer, kissing him on the cheek. "Frustrated, Captain?”

“Moderately,” he grumbled.

“Good,” she teased, inching forward just far enough that the towel she was still holding brushed against the length of his cock, careful to keep her expression innocent. "But we’re still going.“


End file.
